Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

When a group of Italian journalists based in Brussels were asked who frommodern Italy might be a candidate, a couple mentioned the name of CarloAzeglio Ciampi.

Such is the reverence in which this spry 77-year-old is held in his countryas the man who has almost single-handedly taken on the Herculean task ofputting Italy’s public financial morass into some sort of order in time foreconomic and monetary union.

Abroad, the importance of Ciampi’s role in modernising Italy’s fiscalposition is acknowledged to the point where some question whether thedramatic improvement will outlast him.

Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer was paraphrased recently in an Italiannewspaper as saying that he would only accept Italian membership of EMU ifCiampi agreed to stay at the treasury’s helm for the next ten to15 years.

Ciampi has flatly denied that he will step down once he succeeds in gettingItaly into EMU, and no one can deny his stamina as he flits from oneinternational meeting to another. But, inevitably, many are asking just howlong this septuagenarian can keep up his taxing work rate.

When asked recently if he had any plans to retire, Ciampi replied: “I haveno intention of going anywhere, although I can’t exclude that the EternalFather will have other plans for me down the line.”

Ciampi is a leader without a political party – one of the tecnici who takethe helm of Italian politics when the politicians fail to rise above theirsquabbling.

He is a former central banker who studied Greek at university, a nationalhero who drove trucks in Albania during the Second World War, a civilservant who has foregone his salary.

Although he gambled his reputation on Italy joining the single currencyfrom the start, he has few other vices. Ciampi has a sweet-tooth forchocolate, but he does not smoke or drink.

His baker, Signor Virgilio, who owns a shop opposite Ciampi’s unpretentiousapartment building in northern Rome, describes him as “just another man onthe street, very understated”. Yet, in the same breath, the baker adds thatCiampi and his wife Signora Franca, are “very clever, good organisers”.

But others see a different side of him. One treasury official described himas “a bit moody … when it’s a good day, he is very calm, easy to get onwith. But when there’s bad news, especially negative reports from abroad,then even his closest associates are terrified of him.”

If Ciampi is a gambler, he is a shrewd one. Shortly after he becametreasury and budget minister in Italy’s 55th post-war government, he bethis reputation that he would put the country’s economy on a ‘virtuouscycle’. If the Italian government could convince the markets that thecountry would be in the EMU starting line-up, then interest payments on itshuge stock of debt would fall, so giving Rome a sporting chance of edgingthe budget deficit below the key single currency entry level of 3% of grossdomestic product.

The gamble seems to have worked. Ciampi admits that almost half of thefour-percentage-point reduction in the country’s deficit – from 6.7% of GDPin 1996 to 2.7% in 1997 – was the direct result of lower interest payments.

“The European Union is my guiding star,” the bushy-eyebrowed, snappilydressed Ciampi has repeated time and time again during his 21-month spellat the treasury. “Italy will be in the first wave of the EMU and staythere.”

Yet the man who dreamed of becoming a naval officer while growing up in theport city of Livorno, and who still enjoys rowing a small boat off thecoast of Santa Severa, a beach town where he has a weekend home an hour’sdrive north of Rome, admits he did not always know his destiny lay incrunching numbers.

His academic background was steeped in the humanities, with a thesis inGreek literature from the prestigious Normale University in Pisa, ascholarship in German literature at the University of Leipzig and, after astint in the army, a second degree in law.

Legend has it that when awarded the Knight of the Grand Cross of theFederal Republic of Germany in April 1996, Ciampi recited lines in Germanfrom the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and from Goethe’s Faust with an impeccableaccent.

In fact, this would-be man of letters entered the world of finance throughthe back door. Concerned about his precarious teaching position aftergraduating, he took an entrance exam for the Bank of Italy in 1946,reportedly at the suggestion of his wife, herself a bank manager’sdaughter.

He worked his way up from an administrator in local branches to becomegovernor of the Bank of Italy and head of the foreign exchange office in1979. From there, it was an uphill struggle.

During his 14 years as governor of the Bank of Italy from 1979 to 1993,Ciampi was famous for acerbic attacks on the government’s public spendingsprees and warnings about the consequences it could have for the country’scredibility.

His darkest hour, as he himself has said, came in September 1992 when theItalian lira was forced to devalue and Italy was ejected from the EuropeanExchange Rate Mechanism.

Ciampi’s reputation emerged unscathed from the currency crisis, and he wascalled on seven months later, in April 1993, to head Italy’s 52nd post-wargovernment. It was at this point that he surprised everyone by refusing todraw his salary, saying that his pension as former governor of the centralbank would suffice.

Apart from belonging briefly to the anti-fascist Partito d’Azione after thewar, Ciampi has steadfastly refused to join a political party. “The onlyassociation I want to belong to is the boating club at Santa Severa,” hetold the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Perhaps precisely because he is ‘above it all’, Ciampi was chosen tonavigate the country through the troubled transition from the FirstRepublic, whose principal players were swept away in corruption scandals,to what was hoped would be a more stable Second Republic.

Once described by the leader of the separatist Northern League UmbertoBossi as “the most English of the Italians, a man who knows the crookedfrom the straight”, Ciampi has been generally successful in winningplaudits from all sides, irrespective of political background.

Although his nomination as treasury and budget minister in the centre-leftOlive Tree coalition was initially contested by the hard-left RefoundedCommunists (RC), on whose support the government relies for its lower housemajority, he has managed to maintain their backing for drastic deficitreduction measures.

He has so far been able to rein in RC dissent, even after a recent slip ofthe tongue when he said it was “economic nonsense” to think theintroduction of a 35-hour working week would boost employment.

Yet signs of fiscal fatigue are emerging.

He and his appointees, the so-called ‘Ciampi boys’, have come under attackfor their unrelenting budget-cutting. Ciampi insists a stranglehold onpublic finances must continue in order to halve Italy’s debt stock in thenext 12 to 15 years.

Yet perhaps the most awkward clash of swords is between Ciampi, theself-proclaimed euro-enthusiast, and the man who succeeded him at the topof the Bank of Italy.

Antonio Fazio showed his true euro-sceptical colours at a recentparliamentary committee hearing when he said that for an Italy whereproduct and labour markets were unreformed, EMU “would be more likepurgatory than paradise”.

Ciampi retorted that even if EMU were “purgatory”, at least most EUcountries would be there too.

“And don’t forget, purgatory is a lot better than the inferno, and that’swhere we will be if we don’t make EMU,” he quipped.